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Streetcar developments succeeds by flying under radar

That was until it bought up a strip club and an old hotel in an effort to give back to the community

Les Mallins,founder of Streetcar Developments which largely builds low-cost midrise condos in up and coming areas,but is taking on the costly and tricky remaking of the Broadview Hotel. at in Toronto, May 14, 2014.
Colin McConnell/Toronto Star (Colin McConnell / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

He has no aspirations to be a bigger-is-better builder. In fact, Mallins has built the small, but successful, Streetcar Developments by fitting in, rather than standing out, with boutique, midrise projects “no more than a three-iron shot” from the Queen streetcar line.

But it was Tuesday night, as 41-year-old Mallins sat at his Beaches home with his wife, “with a very large glass of wine after a very long day,” that she asked the question he’d never really asked himself.

“What have you done? For a guy who says, ‘I just want to keep it simple, I don’t want to be ‘out there,’ did you see this coming at all?’”

Much to Mallins surprise, it took a strip club to make Streetcar a standout.

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Its purchase this week of the historic New Broadview Hotel and the infamous Jilly’s has led to lots of speculation. Mallins was quick to squelch the worst of it by stating, up front, that Streetcar has no plans to turn the Broadview and Queen landmark into another condo project.

Mallins isn’t sure what he’s going to do with the heritage property, which he first tried to buy back in 2007 and again in 2010, although turning it into an eastend Gladstone or Drake Hotel is obviously one option.

After the building starting collapsing on itself last November — bricks in support posts started disintegrating – the owners finally approached him.

Efforts will be made to find tenants alternative homes in the coming months, but Jilly’s will be shut down within 60 days.

It wasn’t the 35 days of due diligence or structural inspections, as much as this week’s public reaction to the purchase, that has made Mallins recognize what his wife did right away: For someone who shuns the spotlight, he’s right up there on the big stage now.

“For us, this isn’t about trying to further gentrify the area. This is just about saving a beautiful building – a landmark – that is important to the city.

“Another condo building would have been a mistake. We needed something that would be a give-back to the community.”

That’s very much in keeping with Streetcar’s philosophy, to help build a sense of community, along with its clusters of midrise condo projects, which have helped bring new life to Queen St. W. (immediately west of the Gladstone Hotel), Corktown, and Queen St. E.

Its first project at Queen St. E. and Woodbine, Academy Lane Lofts, may be a nondescript, grey stucco midrise, but its street-level stores and cafes are now bustling with activity in what used to be a bowling alley.

Mallins is hoping for the same transformation at Dundas and Carlaw where the 12-storey The Carlaw is under construction in a gritty, largely industrial area that’s now a burgeoning condo community as well.

The ground floor of the 320-unit project will be home to a 10,000 square foot performing arts centre, Crow’s Theatre, as well as a community hub with restaurants and meeting spaces.

A second midrise, The Taylor, is planned just to the east.

While most Streetcar projects are new builds, Mallins is no stranger to the challenges of heritage restoration, which development consultant Barry Lyon describes as “a labour of love, full of costly surprises.”

It faced lots of those back in 2008 when converting the century-old Queen City Vinegar Co. at River and Queen St. to condos, long before Riverside/Corktown or the nearby PanAm Games site had really started taking shape.

“Their projects are not flashy at all or spectacular, but they seem to be making a pretty solid contribution to their neighbourhoods,” says former city planner Ken Greenberg.

“I see this as part of a kind of maturing of the development industry in Toronto, that more and more developers realize it’s important to build neighbourhoods with more than just the basics.”

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